Yap Welcomes The World’s Newest PADI Jr. Open Water Divers

This was part of our Kids Sea Camp family dive adventure week that we host annually.

Sophie Purdon from Florida by way of the Cayman Islands and Lily McDonald of Toronto, Canada are the newest Junior Open Water divers in the world, having completed their class this afternoon at 1 PM. Their final two training dives were at Stammtisch, home of the mantas of Yap and Vertigo, one of the world’s best shark dives. Not bad for training dives.

Lily McDonald, Bill Acker & Sophie Purdon back at Yap Divers after the final training dive.

The young ladies are in Yap as part of Margo Peyton’s Kids Sea Camp Family Divers program. Sophie is with her father Fraser Purdon who is also a PADI instructor, among many other things, such as the Caribbean representative for ScubaPro dive gear and Sea Life cameras. Fraser joined me in teaching the girls and he is the one to certify Sophie while I had the honor of certifying Lily who is in Yap with her parents Rod & Carol McDonald.

Sophie and her Dad Fraser pose at Vertigo during our last training dive. Nice fins Sophie.

This has been a wonderful experience for me personally as I believe strongly that the diving world needs to do more to get young people interested in our sport and for me to have the opportunity to help train two 10 year old girls to SCUBA dive is a huge privilege. I am very excited to share these young ladies with you.